I love the N900 but...
 

Sorry for the rant, I'm sure this topic has been covered many times before, but I am terribly frustrated.

I recently hit a brick wall when trying to flash the emmc on the N900 in Windows 7 32 bit, but I managed to get it to work in Windows XP 32 bit. I am used to finding workarounds for programs and hardware that is no longer supported, since I still have an old Nikon film scanner (remember the days when pictures were stored on a roll of film 36 at a time?), a Psion 5MX, and I enjoy replaying some very old DOS games. But this got me thinking... The Nikon scanner is 8 years old. The Psion 5MX is 10 years old. The DOS games are 15+ years old. Why do I have to deal with these kinds of issues when the N900 is less than 2 years old? Especially since it came out AFTER Vista 64bit or 7 64bit.

I love the N900, and it still does almost everything I need. But less than two years ago it cost me as much as a decent laptop. But whereas on a two year old laptop runs all the latest OSes and programs, the N900 is virtually dead in the water. Nokia pretty much stopped supporting it last summer, a year after its announcement. Many of the apps I'm using haven't seen an update in months, and that's counting experimental versions, forget about stable ones.

I completely understand developers that dropped the N900. Who wants to create apps for a dead platform? I am truly grateful to those that stuck with it, yours is a labour of love. But I hold Nokia responsible to keep updating and supporting a phone I paid good money for. There are laws requiring car manufacturers to keep parts in stock for decades after the end of production, and that costs far more than employing a few programmers to fix bugs and add a few extra features (like being able to flash the emmc in windows 7 32bit WITHOUT jumping through hoops).

The only option I have to repay Nokia's kindness is to NEVER buy another phone from them. Job well done Nokia, you've lost at least one customer for life.

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

I still take pictures with my pro-Zenit camera, which of course uses films:)

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

Flashing the Nokia N900 on a 32bit Windows 7 computer is easy. I too have a 32bit Windows 7 and have flashed my Nokia N900 often. Have you followed instructions?

Not sure what Nikon scanners, DOS games and Windows Vista have to do with the N900, but if you think the N900 is dead in the water, then you have clearly not used it properly. How long have you had yours?

If you perhaps mean that your old PC is better than the N900 because it can still play 15 year old games, then try loading up a DOS emulator and load all those old DOS games, or why not go one step further and load a PS2 emulator or an Atari emulator or Nintendo emulator. I bet your crappy old DOS PC cannot run those!

If you used the N900 properly, you would realize that Nokia do not need to support this device. The Maemo community are doing an excellent job in that department. What exactly are you after from Nokia? In the entire time I have had my Nokia N900 (16 months) I have asked Nokia for support ZERO times. The internet is my support. This forum and my common sense is my support.

What apps are you using that have not been updated? Have you got notifications turned on? There is not a day that goes by that I do not have a new update for software (e.g. today Opera Mobile 11 updated today).

Do you know any developers that have dropped the N900? When last did you visit the download area on this forum? Have you browsed your Application Manager recently? Have you visited the many Maemo websites out there and seen how much software is available for the N900? Developers have NOT dropped the N900 at all. They are building awesome applications for this device. If you download as much as I do there is no way in hell you could make such a statement!

As for blaming Nokia for your incompetence, shame on you! :mad:

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

I WILL NEVER EVER BUY A NOKIA AGAIN IN MY LIFE..
SPENT LOTS OF MONEY ON THE N900.. EVERY MONTH £35 FOR 24 MONTHS ON O2... I WISH THAT I BOUGHT A HTC PHONE OR THE IPHONE 4G (EVEN THOU I HATE THE IPHONE, NOT SURE WHY)..
WHEN IT CAME OUT IT WAS SAME PRICES AS THE IPHONE AND THE LATEST HTC PHONE.. BUT KNOW WTF.. ABT £240 KNEW ..SECOND HAND ABT £80..

VERY VERY DISAPPOINTING..

HAD SOME PROBLEMS,, ALL THANKX TO THE PEOPLE WHO HELP ME ON THIS SITE, THEY HELPED ME ALOT..
NOW MY PHONE DOESN' WORK AT ALL.. DOSNT TURN ON(http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=71855) TRIED EVERYTHING, LOTS OF PEOPLE ONTHIS SITE HELPED BUT UNFORTUNATELY DIDN'T WOK..
I WILL TAKE IT TO A PHONE SHOP AND WE'LL SEE IF THEY CAN FIX. IT..

SORRY IF U THINK I'M ANNOYING

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

YAY I WILL WRITE IN CAPS AND CLEAR ALL DOUBTS AS TO I AM A FOOL OR NOT.

anyways..go buy another phone. even nokia wont care..forget the community

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

I don't think your annoying. People should feel comfortable voicing their frustrations without being branded a troll or annoying.
Hope you get your phone fixed when you take it to repair centre :)

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

Indeed you are annoying and stupid for taking such a ridiculous contract. Why do you need to pay so much money for a contract, did you shop around? Would it not have been cheaper to just buy the phone outright and then find a cheap SIM ONLY or PAYG contract?

I did that and I am now on a £9/mth unlimited data, 1 year (20% reduced after a year) SIM ONLY contract with T-Mobile. If you shop around you will find good deals.

As for people helping you out. There is a lot of help on this forum, but one does need a bit of common sense. :mad:

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

@hhmah

I think you're annoying because you type in all capitals with terrible grammar.

I thought the iPhone 4 came out a long time after the N900. Surely the contract price wouldn't stay the same if so.

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

yh i hop so

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

lol..
the phone was new and expensive on pay as you go.. i bought it second week.. it was.. i think £499..

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

In the guy's defence, we don't really know what he gets in the deal so it's not for us to judge the value. Furthermore, we can't all find £500 in one lump sum to fund the latest phone! I, too, pay £35 monthly and am happy to do so for the privilege of owning an N900. It's all a question of whether or not you feel you are getting value for money.

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

Well after 2 years on your ridiculous contract of £35/month you'll have paid £840. :confused:

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

I think that the difficulties i've had with my n900 are just the thing i want from this phone. it works, i can call my mom once in a while and txt and play music. and all the other stuff i used to do with laptop but i sold it after i got n900. everything that needs to be done with PC, i can do with this. -exept for gaming. My PC is just gathering dust under my table. I like doing things on my own(and with LOTS of help from community) and i think i won't be needing nokia for anything with this phone. I used to Own a symbian phone but i would never consider going back with symbian. i am also used to wipe everything cleanand start from scratch and i think, formatting your PC and putting Windows XP is more difficult than flashing with win7 32bit. i have it, and first time i ever flashed was under win7. I am not saying that you aren't allowed to hate N900 or nokia, i hate nokia too but i sure love my N900 ;)

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

Of course I followed instructions. A few months ago I flashed my N900 with the PR1.2 fiasco and emmc and it worked. On the same Windows 7 32 bit machine, PR1.3 fiasco reflash worked, but the emmc failed. Read my post to see what I tried.

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...8&postcount=68

These old devices fall in the same category as the N900, no longer supported by their respective manufacturers. The difference is the N900 is less than two years old, while the others are 8-15 years old. I've had my N900 almost since it came out, and I've downloaded and tested hundreds of apps, from extras, extras-testing, extras-devel as well as various other sources.

I run kernel-power (no longer maintained), rootsh (no longer maintained), battery-graph (no longer maintained), conversations widget (no longer maintained), fbreader (no longer maintained), flash 9 (no longer maintained) and a whole bunch of other apps that last saw an update around PR1.2. Need I continue?

Go back and read my post again. Nowhere did I say an old computer is better than the N900. I just said a computer of similar age to the N900 is far better supported by its manufacturer than the N900.

Nice of you to assume I am not using my N900 "properly." What does that even mean? I'm checking emails, browsing sites, watching movies, making phone calls, reading ebooks, playing music. And many of the apps that I use to accomplish these tasks have bugs that haven't been fixed and will never be fixed (like the communications widget crashing when loading a skype conversation that took place on another computer)

And if the N900 does not need Nokia's support, where is a flasher that works in Windows 7 64bit? Where is Adobe Flash 10.2? Sure the Community SSU solved some issues (I'm running that too), but much of the phone is inaccessible to them because many components are closed source.


Yes, over the past year several developers dropped the N900. Just look at all the apps in the repositories that haven't gotten an update in a long time.

As to your last line, if you think Nokia is NOT an incompetent, brain dead company even after their W7 announcement, you are living under a rock...

Edit: Thanks for the crappy rating my thread got. You guys are very touchy when it comes to criticism of Nokia in general. Why this amazing loyalty to a company? Just like me, you all PAID Nokia for a device only to be shortchanged in the support you received for it. It's like getting slapped in the face and then saying "Thank you sir, may I have another?"

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

I'd be pretty annoyed if I had bought an n900 on a 24 month contract, and then it didn't work, and then have to pay £35 pm for something that is no use to me. Have you spoken to the people who arranged the contract, and pointed out that the n900 stopped working. Presumably the contract is dependent on you having a phone to make use of it - if the phone they supplied is not working, surely they would have to replace it with something else? They must have arranged some form of insurance - in which case, can you claim for a replacement under the insurance, if it is broken?

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

Well PR1.2 is 9 months old, hardly a few months old. Maybe it was something on your N900 causing the problem. I did a post recently on "Flashing the eMMC & Rootfs on my Nokia N900" and it worked perfectly. Did you follow the instructions on this page - Updating the firmware. I can vouch for these instructions.
No where in your link / post #68 do you mention following the above instructions.

Did you following Post #20 on that same topic?

Name another phone manufacturer or OS running Adobe Flash 10.2? NITDroid on N900 can I believe, and isn't there a DEV version of Flash capable of running on a N900.

Nokia maybe brain dead for partnering with Microsoft, but for me that is not a reason to hate Nokia. Nokia churn out good devices and they have been for years, and why should that suddenly stop now? They have already released some good Smartphones, not all perfect, but then what phone manufacture has released a perfect Smartphone that updates it software on a regular basis.

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

yh i kno.. too much

and i only get 900mints and 5000 text.. no internet.. i hate O2.. anyway i've got abt 9months left, than i'll just get a different phone.. HTC phones are awasome

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

Awesome in what way? Thee must be something that is tickling your fancy? :D

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

i did call them and said there is nothing we can do for you, take it to a phone shop and fix it.. annoying i thou they ganna try to help me but they didnt do anything..

i will take it to a phone shop and if they said we cant fix... i will call them back and tell them "am i paying £35 a month for nothin" ..

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

how it looks, the menu, speed, android, and most important thing flash player 10..

HTC DESIRE HD.. i love that phone

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

Yes, I followed ALL those instructions, I promise you that. In the end there wasn't anything wrong with the N900 itself, since I flashed it on another computer under Windows XP without any problems.

As to Flash 10.2, I can upload a screen capture of my HTC Desire running Cyanogenmod 7 nightly 37 with Adobe Flash Player 10.2.

My problem with Nokia is that they released a VERY VERY expensive phone, supported it for about one year maybe a year and a half, and then forgot it even existed.

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

Well let me know when you get one, then we can do a keyboard / virtual keyboard speed test. ;) I might even load up NITDroid so we have a like for like OS.

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

why did they join microsoft (window 7 phones) and not google (android). microsoft is new and i believe they dont have much apps.. in my opinion android is much better..

nokia is just... cheap..
i think they joined microsoft than android is beacuse microsoft is cheaper..

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

loooooooooool yh..
not sure if we can make phone calls on nitdroid, so i gave up long ago..

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

Isn't Android essentially free?

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

i dont really kno

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

My theory why they went Microsoft....

Didn't the current CEO of Nokia come from Microsoft. I am sure he is still very loyal to Microsoft, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if him and the CEO of Microsoft set out to hook Nokia all along. It would have been a lot more difficult if there wasn't an Ex-Microsoft person at Nokia. Whatever the motive, it's done now, so there is no point slagging off Nokia because of it.

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

i bought my n900 in february (ie I am a maemo noob) and within one week I was able to flash the phone incl. emmc with my Windows 7 64bit pc. All I did was google it, follow the instructions I found, and flashed it in one try without any problems at all.

I just think N900 is not for everyone.. and sadly most ppl dont realize until its too late. From the phone was first released, I knew it was an enthusiast phone (hence the open source os) and there was always the possibility maemo wouldnt become a mainstream. all of this i got from just researching.

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

I completely agree with you, the N900 was and always will be an experimental phone. I bought it knowing full well what it could (and could not do) and I still love it. I also owned an N800 and two N810s, so I am NOT new to Maemo or to the flasher utility. Go back and read the thread I linked. For some people (myself included) all the instructions failed, even if they were followed to the letter.

Now what I don't understand is how do your abilities to search the net and to bypass bugs relate to the fact Nokia dropped the N900 support a long time ago? That was my main point, not the fact that flashing may or may not work in Win 7 64bit. Nokia sold a buggy phone and stopped releasing fixes, some of which have been reported months before development stopped. Have I not made that clear?

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

i love the n900 but...








threads like this make me want to punch a baby in the face.

Re: I love the N900 but...
 

That sounds like a reason to be mad at the local con shop you bought a contract from, not a reason to be pissed off at a device manufacturer.

Also, being one of the main people that tried to help you out in the thread you linked: Sorry to say, your phone issue is mainly your fault. You tried to install something you had no business installing, without any knowledge on how it worked, and broke your device in the process. It's been pointed out several times that simply re-flashing your phone kernel will very likely fix your issue. Since you've yet to even try that, but persist in whining, I really can't sympathize with you.

Would you call a car manufacturer bad if you took your car home and tried to change out the engine with only a screwdriver and no knowledge of how it works? When you break it, would you be pissed off at the manufacturer for not welding your hood shut? Would you be upset that you now have to take it to a shop to fix it, since you apparently lack the capacity to fix it yourself? (Despite people pointing out how trivial it is to fix it!)

Now if you were like the OP here, where you clearly know what you're doing and have tried to fix it, and because of bad hardware or the like it's just not taking, that's another story. But when you don't even make an effort to help yourself after other have gone out of their way to try to help you? Then whine about it, and blame the manufacturer? That's just rude and, frankly, ignorant.